Friday, August 31, 2012

For over a thousand years the Byzantine Emperor sat in his palace,
ruling over the empire as God’s regent on earth. His was the ultimate
authority. The emperor was the font of all law, granter of titles and
offices, distributer of largess, master of the Church, commander of the
army, head of the bureaucracy, and supreme judge. The decisions of the
individual who sat on the throne had repercussions throughout the Byzantine
world and far beyond. Decrees, letters, judgments, and commands left
Constantinople every day signed by the emperor in red ink and secured
with the imperial seal. These seals not only protected and authenticated
imperial documents, they also spread the emperor’s image and served as
imperial propaganda. It is no accident that while one emperor chose to
be depicted as a soldier, another chose to be shown as a civilian.
Although Christ accompanies one emperor, another might choose St.
Constantine, or the Mother of God, or perhaps simply the cross. Was his
title Greek, basileus, or Latin, augustus? Did he want to emphasise his family as an imperial asset or assert his position as autokrator,
the sole ruler of God’s empire on earth? The designs of the imperial
seals are interesting for more than their artistic value, they provide
an insight into the minds and policies of the rulers whose image they
bore; they tell us not only how they wished to be viewed by the
recipients of their letters, but also how they viewed themselves.
Imperial seals, with their titles, images, and projection of divinely
sanctioned authority, show the blend of Roman, Hellenistic, and
Judaeo-Christian ingredients that went into the Byzantine imperial
recipe.

This exhibition presents the imperial lead seals from the Dumbarton
Oaks Collection. Sections include: a chronology of the rulers of
Byzantium exploring the design and inscriptions of their seals and
presenting brief biographies; an analysis of the development of imperial
titulature; the iconographic choices made by usurpers; and finally a
section on seals that show or reference the imperial family. We hope
that after visiting this exhibit you will be inspired to explore the
online catalogue of Byzantine seals in the Dumbarton Oaks collection.
This project was begun in 2010, and is continually updated as more seals
from our collection of 17,000 are catalogued.

Wednesday, August 29, 2012

It is the
purpose of the Middle East Librarians' Association to facilitate communication
among members through meetings and publications; to improve the quality of
area librarianship through the development of standards for the profession
and education of Middle East library specialists; to compile and disseminate
information concerning Middle East libraries and collections and to represent
the judgment of the members in matters affecting them; to encourage cooperation
among members and Middle East libraries, especially in the acquisition of
materials and the development of bibliographic control; to cooperate with
other library and area organizations in projects of mutual concern and benefit;
to promote research in and development of indexing and automated techniques
as applied to Middle East materials.Anyone who is employed by an institution to service Middle East library materials
in a professional capacity (selection, acquisition, cataloging, indexing,
reference work, administration, and/or preparation of research tools), as
well as any other person who has an interest in these aspects of Middle East
library materials, is eligible for membership in our Association.

Monday, August 27, 2012

The purpose of this page is to concentrate in one place,
resources found on the internet that relate to the Aramaic Bible in his
best-known version, the Peshitta.

The Peshitta (Syriac: ܦܫܝܛܬܐ‎ for “simple, common, straight,
vulgate”, Arabic:”بسيطة”, sometimes called the Syriac Vulgate) is the
standard version of the Bible for churches in the Syriac tradition.This text was compiled and produced by Philipos with the help of Francisco Arriaga and PLGO,
and is in the public domain. Copy freely. There are no restrictions on
the use of this text. If used in some blog or website, We’d appreciate a
link back to http://aramaico.wordpress.com or http://plgo.org , but is
not mandatory.

You can download a HTML version of this page with direct links to the files by clicking here.The original source for this page is here.

Traduções

Horae Aramaicae: comprising concise notices of the
Aramean dialects in general, and of the versions of Holy Scripture
extant in them: a translation of the Gospel according to St. Mathew, and
of the Epistle to the Hebrews, from the ancient Peschito Syriac.
1843
John Wesley Etheridge. Simpkin , Marshall. [link]

The Syrian churches : their early history, liturgies, and
literature : with a literal translation of the four gospels from the
Peschito, or canon of holy scripture in use among the oriental
Christians from the earliest times.
1846
John Wesley Etheridge. London : Longman, Green, Brown and Longmans. [link]

The apostolical Acts and Epistles, from the Peschito : or
ancient Syriac to which are added, the remaining Epistles, and the book
of Revelation, after a later Syrian text.
1849
John Wesley Etheridge. Longman, Green, Brown and Longmans. [link]

The New Testament : or, The book of the holy gospel of
our Lord and our God, Jesus the Messiah a literal translation from the
Syriac Peschito version.
1851
James Murdock. Stanford and Swords. [link]

A translation, in English daily used, of the
Peshito-Syriac text, and of the received Greek text, of Hebrews, James, 1
Peter, and 1 John.
1889
William Norton. W. K. Bloom. [link]

Sunday, August 26, 2012

Alice E. Kober (1906-1950) was a Classical scholar and academician whose
fastidiously detailed and documented life’s work contributed to the
decipherment of Linear B. Until just days before her death from cancer
at the age of 43, she employed a unique heuristic approach that proved
conclusively the Mycenaean script (circa 1500-1100 BC) is inflected. Her findings and methods were subsumed by Michael Ventris (1922-1956)
who in 1952 successfully deciphered Linear B as a syllabic language of
archaic Greek etymology. Research material, publications, manuscripts,
lectures, correspondence, and professional material are included in the
approximately 188,825 items that comprise the Alice E. Kober Papers (1932-1950)
of the Program in Aegean Scripts and Prehistory. The bulk of the items
support the decipherment of Linear B while correspondence, lectures,
and professional material add context to the research material.

Friday, August 10, 2012

AWOL has passed 800,000 page views, and is now approaching 4800 subscribers by
email, just a little more than three years after I deployed that function.
In addition, a handful of subscribers get the feed in other ways. I'm
gratified that such a large number of you find AWOL interesting enough
to voluntarily add another piece of email to your busy queues.

Traffic
on AWOL will probably be light for the next two week while I focus my
attention on some other things. In the meantime I invite you to amuse
yourself by browsing through Bookplates of Scholars in Ancient Studies. If any of you have additions, corrections or comments on that, please do get in touch with me. I'm particularly interested if you can surface other interesting bookplates of scholars of antiquity.

The Vergil Project is a resource for students, teachers, and readers of Vergil's Aeneid. It offers an on-line hypertext
linked to interpretive materials of various kinds. These include basic
information about grammar, syntax, and diction; several commentaries; an
apparatus criticus; help with scansion; and other resources.

The text

The display text that
appears on the left side of the screen is that of the old OCT by Hirtzel (1900),
with modifications. Each word is linked to a variety of resources that can be
selected from the sidebar. The text initially displayed is always the first
twenty-five lines of the poem. The user can then navigate to another book and
line number by using the two slider bars that appear at the top of the screen,
above the text and resources.

The sidebar

The right side of
the screen contains a sidebar that is divided into four sections. By default
each of these sections is visible, but each can be hidden or reopened at the
user's discretion by clicking on the icon ( or ) in the top left corner of each box.

The Options section allows the user to customize the display. Choices include:

Displaythe text in units of 25, 50, 100, 250, 500, or 1,000 lines.

Select
from among the different kinds of resources. As a whole, these are available in
three forms:

In-line textual aids are included within the text of the poem and are displayed in one of three ways:

Modern punctuation is simply inserted into the primary text.

Textual variantsappear as asterisks next to any word for which a variant reading (whether
attested or conjectural) exists. Each different reading appears as a separate
asterisk. Passing the cursor over these asterisks displays the alternate
reading along with the sources that attest or endorse it.

Natural vowel quantities replaces the original text
with one that marks long and short vowel quantities. The individual
words remain linked to other resources.

Mouse hover textual aid appears when the cursor is rolled over a particular word in the text

Sidebar resources are available in several areas that are arranged to the right of the text.

Some resources are
available in more than one of these forms so that users can consult them in the
form that they find most convenient. Resources that involve displaying large
amounts of text are generally available only as sidebar resources.

The Reading assistance section contains basic information
about grammar, syntax, and diction in the form of an approximate English
equivalent for each word in context.

The Concordance section lists every other occurrence of the same word in the poem, including all grammatical forms.

The Resources for selected text gives access to several commentaries and translations of the Aeneid and to a full list of
textual variants.

Welcome to The Index of Christian Art online
publications! In the firm belief that we all need to share as much
scholarship as is possible, the Index of Christian Art is pleased to
present an occasional series of online conference proceedings and
papers. When it is not possible to publish in the traditional hardcopy
format we will use the Internet for online publications.

The first set of papers are the conference
proceedings from a one day event held in Princeton University on
Thursday July 12th 2012 which was devoted to Digitization and The Arts.
The papers from that colloquium are presented here as they were
delivered and preserve the spontaneity of the speakers. Short
biographies are included.

The Ancient Textual Imaging Group at Brigham Young University has
pioneered developments into enhancing texts of deteriorated and damaged
papyri using multi-spectral imaging. This process has rendered legible
many stained, discolored, or faded portions of ancient documents. In
effect, the process has restored the documents to a state of legibility
that they have not possessed since antiquity. This research collection
represents the completion of a two-year venture by the Ancient Textual
Imaging Group to capture, process, and provide public access to
high-quality multi-spectral images of hundreds of legibly problematic
papyrus documents from collections at the University of Michigan; University of California, Berkeley; and Columbia University. This project was funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities.

On the occasion of the 25th anniversary of the research activities at
Petras, the Minoan urban settlement and palace of Siteia, the present
web-site was created, in the summer of 2010.
All excavations, surface surveys and studies, since 1985, are presented
here. Furthermore the public outreach, educational programs, exhibitions
and the presentation of the site to the public are described. Since
2006 the Petras site is open to the citizens and the visitors of Siteia
(Archaeological Museum of Siteia, tel. 28430 23917).

The visitor of the web-site can access information on the researchers
working at Petras and the increasing bibliography; furthermore many
photographs are available of the excavations, the finds and the people
who worked or visited the excavations.

The web-site will be constantly up-dated and we would appreciate your comments, which will help us to improve it.

Tsipopoulou, Μ., 1997a. Late Minoan III Reoccupation in the Area of the Palatial Building at Petras, Siteia, in Hallager, E. & B. P. Hallager (eds), Late
Minoan III Pottery Chronology and Terminology: Acts of a Meeting Held
at the Danish Institute at Athens, August 12-14, 1994, Monographs of the
Danish Institute at Athens, Vol. 1, Athens, 209-257. Download: M.Tsipopoulou 1997.pdf (32.89 MB)

Tsipopoulou, M. & A. Papacostopoulou, 1997. “Villas” and Villages in the Hinterland of Petras, Siteia, in Hägg, R. (ed.), The Function of the “Minoan Villa”, Proceedings of the 8th International Symposium at the Swedish Archaeological Institute at Athens, June 1992, Stockholm, 203-214. Download: Tsipopoulou-Papakostopoulou1997.pdf (14.65 MB)

The primary focus of the project is notice and comment on open access material relating to the ancient world, but I will also include other kinds of networked information as it comes available.

The ancient world is conceived here as it is at the Institute for the Study of the Ancient World at New York University, my academic home at the time AWOL was launched. That is, from the Pillars of Hercules to the Pacific, from the beginnings of human habitation to the late antique / early Islamic period.

AWOL is the successor to Abzu, a guide to networked open access data relevant to the study and public presentation of the Ancient Near East and the Ancient Mediterranean world, founded at the Oriental Institute, University of Chicago in 1994. Together they represent the longest sustained effort to map the development of open digital scholarship in any discipline.